


Live 'Til You Die

by PR Zed (przed)



Category: The Professionals
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-17
Updated: 2013-08-17
Packaged: 2017-12-23 18:36:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/929743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/przed/pseuds/PR%20Zed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When they're trapped in an impossible situation, Doyle does what he thinks he has to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Live 'Til You Die

Doyle risked putting his head up, and was rewarded with the whine of a bullet and the ricochet of a splinter of the crate they were hiding behind.

"I take it our friends are still out there," Bodie said as he checked the magazine in his gun. Doyle wasn't sure why he'd bothered since they were both down to their last few bullets. Checking their magazines wasn't going to magically produce more ammunition.

"You might say that." Doyle slid back behind their crate and looked around the warehouse for what seemed the millionth time. For the millionth time, he couldn't see any way out of the trap they were caught in. The villains, whoever the fuck they were, had men on the main door, men on the side door, and snipers covering every area but the few square feet they were hiding in. They weren't making it out of this fucking warehouse. Not as things stood. But maybe things didn't have to stand as they were.

"Who do you reckon's faster, you or me?" Doyle asked, trying to make the question seem casual, trying to hide the fact that it was death or life.

"Faster at what?" Bodie was distracted, scanning the warehouse as Doyle had just done, looking for an escape route that wasn't there.

"At running, you berk." Doyle barked out in frustration.

"I suppose you are." Bodie looked at him suspiciously, suddenly paying close attention to his partner. "Why?"

"You're not gonna like it."

"What are you up to, Doyle?"

"If a bloke was fast enough, he could get across the warehouse to those crates over there, distract the uglies at the doors."

"Or said bloke could get shot."

"We stay here much longer, and we're both gonna get shot."

"Butch and Sundance, that's us." It was a last, very Bodie-like attempt at humour.

"I don't want to be Butch Cassidy."

"That's good, because I always pictured you more as the Sundance Kid."

"Bodie." Doyle put steel in his voice, because he had to make Bodie see this was the only way. And it seemed to work, because Bodie stopped even trying to joke with him. His eyes went deadly serious, the way they got when Cowley asked them to do something he wasn't keen on. Or something he knew Doyle wouldn't be keen on.

"All right," Bodie said, his mouth a thin line. "And if one of us, the fastest one," he paused and looked pointedly at Doyle, "tries for those crates and gets shot, what does that give the slowest one, the one who's left, except a few extra minutes of contemplating when he's going to be snuffed out?"

"It gives him a distraction, a chance they'll pull the men off that side door, a chance that they'll all be so busy looking at the fast one, they'll let the slow one through their fingers."

"It's a fucking slim chance." He could see the muscle tense in Bodie's jaw, could see the way he gripped the butt of his gun.

"It's a chance." He took hold of Bodie's wrist, all he could risk at the moment, and squeezed it as hard as he could. Squeezed it until Bodie winced. "I want to give you that chance."

"Doyle…" Bodie stopped whatever he was going to say and shook his head, his meaning clear enough.

"Make the best of it, Bodie," he said. Gripping the front of Bodie's jacket, he pulled him close and kissed him, hard and fierce, a kiss that recalled all the others they'd shared, and all the ones they'd never have now. Then before he could change his mind, he ran out from behind the boxes.

It took a few seconds for the shooting to start. Perhaps their opposite numbers couldn't believe he'd be so daft as to make a blind run at the front door. But the shooting finally did start, and Doyle ran as erratic an evasion pattern as he'd ever managed, sparing a moment to put one of his remaining precious bullets into an idiot who'd dared to put his head up.

Then he was drawing close to the door, and he almost began to think he was going to make it, that his foolish ploy had paid off not just for Bodie, but for himself. He smiled as he began to calculate the best way around the obstacles that remained, the best way to put down the men standing between him and freedom. But then there was another crack of gunfire—maybe from the catwalk above, maybe from the men running from the side door—and Doyle felt shattering pain in his leg.

He stumbled on a few more steps, all momentum gone, adrenaline only just about keeping him going. Then there was another shot, and his shoulder was hit. He dropped the gun, dropped to the floor, dropped into a dark pit that seemed to open up underneath him. 

_Live, Bodie_ , he thought,. _Live, you bloody bastard_. And then the darkness took him.

* * *

They were going to die together, that's what Bodie had thought. And he was okay with that. He'd never expected to make old bones. Didn't really want to without a certain irritating sod at his side. He would still fight, of course. No need to make it too easy on the enemy, or on Death. But there was a certain rightness in it.

And then Doyle had gone and spoiled it all.

Coming up with a half-arsed plan was just like him. At worst, they'd both end up dead anyway. At best…no, there was no at best.

Doyle had kissed him and started running, and Bodie had run too. In the opposite direction to Doyle, in the opposite direction his heart was screaming at him to run.

 _You should die together_ his heart whispered to him, traitorous thing that it was. But Doyle had told him to make the best of it, and he wouldn't fail Doyle. He'd never fail Doyle. Not if he could help it. So he had run for the side door, kept running when the shooting started, when the sound of bullets was nearly deafening. Kept running when, worst of all, the shooting stopped.

He made it through that side door—abandoned by men who'd gone after Doyle, and wasn't it just like the curly-haired oik to be right about something like that—made it out into the night. He ran through the maze of old warehouses they'd found themselves in the middle of. Ran until he found a better hiding place, one where his R/T worked.

"This is 3.7," he yelled into his R/T. "Priority A-3. Doyle is down." The only response at first was a garbled crackle. "Did you hear me? Doyle is down!"

He wondered when the rain had started, how it had made it inside this building he was crouched inside. Because that was the only way to explain why his face was wet, wasn't it?

* * *

When Betty opened the door without knocking, Cowley was pacing his office, wearing the same path into the floor that he'd been doing for the past two hours. Ever since Bodie and Doyle had seemingly vanished from London's streets after they'd called in that they were investigating something suspicious. 

"We've found them, sir."

"Where?"

"The East End. Bodie called in. He's hiding in an old warehouse. He and Doyle were pinned down by a group of armed men, identity unknown."

"Send a squad out to help him."

"Murphy and Anson already have their teams on the way."

"Good." But then he registered the full import of what Betty had told him. "If Bodie is hiding, where is Doyle?"

There was a momentary pause before Betty answered.

"He's down, sir. He distracted the enemy to give Bodie a chance to escape."

"Is he alive?"

"Bodie doesn't know."

"Damn." Bad enough that two of his best seemed to have happened upon something unawares, something he'd had no warning of. But to have lost one of them... "Send a medical unit to the area." He grabbed his topcoat and headed out of the office with Betty following. "And have Ruth meet me downstairs." It went without saying that he'd coordinate this particular cock-up from the ground.

"Sir." Betty was on the phone before he reached the corridor. And Ruth was barrelling down the staircase behind him before he reached the ground floor.

"Do you have the location?" Cowley asked as he settled into the passenger seat.

"Of course, sir." Not that he'd ever doubted it. Ruth Pettifer was the most efficient driver and bodyguard he'd ever been assigned.

Leaving the driving to Ruth, he spent the length of the high-speed ride through the streets of London on his car phone, calling in more agents, advising the Met that he would appreciate their help in blocking off the area in question but that they were otherwise to leave well enough alone, and confirming that the medical team would be there when needed.

By the time he arrived in the East End, the Met had set up road blocks, Anson had a secure perimeter set up around the warehouse in question, and Bodie…Bodie was ready to storm the warehouse single-handed. Probably would have done already if Murphy hadn't taken hold of his arm.

"We've got to go in, sir," Bodie said, his tone half commanding, half pleading. "Doyle's still in there."

"So I understand," Cowley said, turning to Murphy. "Are all teams ready?"

"Yes, sir."

"I don't suppose I can convince you to wait outside?" Cowley asked Bodie. Bodie didn't even bother answering, which was its own kind of answer. "I thought not. Murphy, you lead the assault. Bodie, you are to follow Murphy's orders. Anson, make sure no one gets out of the perimeter."

"Yes, sir," all three men said at once.

"Good. Now, go and get those bastards."

* * *

For Bodie, the raid on the warehouse proceeded in a fog. The approach on the building, CI5 snipers targeting their snipers, the breaking down of the doors, the chatter of small arms fire from both sides, none of it seemed real. He supposed it must be because he'd shut down his feelings. If he worried, he might hesitate, so he wouldn't worry, wouldn't be uneasy, wouldn't be afraid. He would follow orders and do his job and that would be enough.

It had to be enough.

But then they broke free to the main part of the warehouse floor, and Bodie saw a very familiar body crumpled on the floor and all the worry, all the fear flooded back. He clenched his jaw as he tasted acid in his throat. But he didn't let the feelings shut him down. He fell back on years of training, heard the voices of every sergeant who'd ever tried to drill tactics and strategy into his head and his body.

_Eyes up, soldier! Watch for your targets._

He worked his way across the floor, a few feet at a time, with Anson backing him up all the way. 

_Short controlled bursts. Don't use up all your ammunition on one unfriendly._

And then he was finally at Doyle's side.

Doyle lay unmoving in two pools of blood spreading out from the wounds in his shoulder and his leg. 

"Is he alive?" Anson asked as he took up a guarding position over them.

Bodie managed to find a thin and thready pulse beating in his neck.

"Yeah. Just."

"You look after him, Bodie." He took up a defensive stance to one side of Doyle. "I'll look after the pair of you."

Bodie spared Anson a grateful look, and then he got to work on Doyle.

The leg wound looked by far the worse, so Bodie concentrated on that. He applied pressure hard enough to staunch the flow of blood, hard enough to make Doyle shudder, and used his own body to shield Doyle from the gunfire that still crackled around them.

And that was all he could do, stop the blood, and wait for the battle to end.

For far too long the whine of bullets sounded around them. But the gunfire finally became less frequent, and Bodie heard voices he recognized, Murphy, McCabe, Ruth, calling all clear.

"Where's the bloody ambulance?" he muttered when he heard Murphy give the final all clear. Soon enough there was the rumble of an engine, and the medical team were taking over from him.

He stood there as the ambulance men dressed Doyle's wounds and loaded him into the ambulance. He was frozen in place, his hands and arms soaked in Doyle's blood to the elbows, as the ambulance roared away.

"He'll be okay," Anson said, and clapped a hand on Bodie's shoulder. "Miserable sod like him, he's too tough to die."

"Is he?" Bodie said, and his voice sounded lost in his own ears.

"'Course he is," Anson said, though he sounded less hearty, less convinced than he had a second ago. "Now let's get you out of here."

Anson moved his hand to Bodie's back and steered him out of the chaos of the warehouse, past the bodies and the injured, past fellow agents. Bodie saw the Cow giving Anson the nod to some silent question, but before he could ask what they were up to, he was in a car and moving away.

* * *

Doyle floated through a landscape of memory and nightmare. One moment he was a boy in Derby running the streets with his mates, the next he was a young man in London, taking a kicking in a back alley. One moment he was gunning down an enemy, the next he was taking a bullet himself. Faces drifted through his dreams: his mum, a favourite teacher, Sid, and George Cowley all cajoled and harangued him to be careful, to do his best, to look after himself, to think, damn it, and under it all he could hear a murmuring, a familiar voice that had to be saying something important, if only he could hear what it was.

"..stupid bastard..."

There it was. He chased the voice through Macklin's training grounds, ignoring an attack from Towser as he followed it. He raced after it through housing estates and government offices, almost losing track of it on a derelict high street until it finally began to grow louder.

"...fucking do that. It'll fucking kill me."

He forced his eyelids to flutter open, and was greeted by grey walls, grey curtains, and a dark head bowed over the grey sheets tucked around him.

"So help me, God, Ray. I'm not going through that again."

 _Bodie_ , he tried to say, but his throat was so dry he couldn't even manage a croak. He swallowed and tried again.

"Bodie."

The head shot up, and Bodie looked at him, unshaven and scruffier than Doyle had ever seen him outside of an undercover op, his eyes haunted and exhausted.

"Ray?" Bodie rested his hand on Doyle's, his touch cautious. 

Doyle tried to reach out with his other hand, only to find it was bound across his chest. Another shift and he found his right leg was stuck in a cast up to his hip. A low throbbing emerged from the leg, a shadow of pain masked by the drugs he could feel drifting through his veins.

"You okay?" His voice was a whisper, all the volume he could manage. 

"Yeah," Bodie said.

"Good." 

"It's not good, you pillock." Bodie squeezed his hand so hard that the pain overcame the narcotic haze filling his brain. "Do you know how close you came? Do you know how much blood you lost, how long it took to put that leg back together? Do you know how many times they told me you probably wouldn't make it?"

"Was worth it," Doyle said, his voice still quiet, but more forceful now. Because Bodie's safety _was_ worth it; Bodie's life had a value greater than he could imagine.

"No, it wasn't, Ray." Bodie stared at him, held his gaze with an unblinking gaze of his own. "I don't want you to pay for my life with yours. I don't want you to make any fucking noble sacrifice."

"Wouldn't you have done the same?" A horrible question, but one that bore asking. 

He saw a flood of conflicting emotions cross Bodie's face as he struggled with the answer: horror, determination, shock, resignation.

"Probably," Bodie admitted. "But maybe I don't want to have to make those choices anymore."

"You can't mean..." Doyle trailed off. If either one of them were going to make the choice to leave CI5, he had always thought it would be him, not his partner. Bodie was too good a soldier to put his own needs above duty.

"I want out." Bodie swallowed hard, and Doyle could see him tense up until the cords in his neck were standing out. "I want both of us out. I want to get old with you, Ray. I don't want to sacrifice all for God, country, and George fucking Cowley."

It wasn't the best time to be making such a big decision, not when he was wounded and weak and filled with enough morphine to make his head spin. But whether now or later, he knew there was only one choice to be made.

"All right, then."

"What?" Quick as that, all the tension in Bodie's frame was gone. He looked like a boxer whose opponent had taken a dive before he'd laid a glove on him.

"You can tell the Cow we're out of the field or we're out of CI5."

"Really?"

"You win, Bodie. You mean more to me than the job." The sense of relief Doyle felt told him he was making the right choice.

"Funnily enough, I had worked that out," Bodie said, and allowed the first hint of a smile to touch the edges of his mouth.

"Good." Doyle's eyes drifted shut and he was powerless to stop them. 

He thought he felt Bodie's hand draw across his cheek, but he wasn't sure. He was pulled under by sleep, and this time he was met by dreams, not nightmares.

He knew he would live. They both would. And in the end, that's what mattered most.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [hc_bingo](http://hc_bingo.livejournal.com) challenge, for the sacrifice square. Huge thanks to [Callisto](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Callisto/pseuds/Callisto) and m. butterfly for incredibly helpful betas, and [ML Mead](http://archiveofourown.org/users/moonlightmead/pseuds/ML%20Mead) for double-checking that the ending wasn't crap.


End file.
